Valley Venture Mentors held their first session of “Pitch Camp I” for the newest batch of startup businesses in their Mentorship Program Wednesday, February 25th, and overall this was the tip that stuck out the most. Now it may not seem relevant to business pitching right now, but we’ll get into that later. From my attendance at this event, I found that there is a lot more to learn about pitching your business than I thought, and this is my chance to share that information with you. After reading this post, you will know the best tips and tricks for giving a successful business pitch to investors and mentors, and you’ll understand exactly what is meant by the ‘dead seagull’.

First we’ll go over some technical things that were shared at Pitch Camp 1.

When presenting stay in front of the microphone and read from the computer in front of you not the projection behind you. This way everyone will be able to hear and understand what you are saying.

Use 30-point font or larger and no more than 6-10 words per slide because otherwise people will not be able to read and many words will distract the audience from you, the presenter.

Try to limit the amount of numbers you add to each slide. If you have a slide full of numbers and statistics, people will confuse them.

Save everything in PDF format to avoid any technical difficulties.

And last but most importantly, your pitch must be 2 minutes or less!

Now that you know how to present your business pitch, you might be wondering what to include in the pitch. Here are some tips from the Pitch Camp about the content of your pitch.

Do not present your team’s credentials in “resume style”. People want to hear about the accomplishments you made that pertain to the job you will be doing, not what titles you’ve had or what schools you went to.

Do not explain every detail about your business in the pitch. Give just enough so that people will understand your concept and want to know more.

Show that your business can really do something for someone. Get people to see the benefits rather than the features. For example, when ordering food you want to hear about how good it will taste (benefits), not exactly what ingredients went into it (features).

Know who your target market is. If you have conducted customer development interviews, make sure to include this in your pitch. It proves that you intimately understand your customers and their needs.

Lastly, explain your business’s competitive advantage over other businesses in this market.

Alright, so far we’ve talked about how to present your pitch and what to include in your pitch, but I bet you are all still wondering about this dead seagull. Paul’s pitch tip that stood out the most to me, and seemed the most useful to the entrepreneurs, was his dead seagull concept. Your slideshow is a tool to keep people engaged; putting too much text on a slide can get boring and the audience will be busy reading instead of listening. If you throw an engaging picture on your slide that relates to what you are talking about, it will keep the audience listening and wanting to know more. In a world right after the BP oil spill what type of slide would have more of a lasting impact, one full of statistics and text showing how many seagulls are dying or a high definition picture of a dead seagull? We are all visual creatures; we will be more impacted by meaningful pictures than boring text.

Business pitch’s are nothing to be afraid of! It’s one of the only times that you get to talk about yourself and all your great ideas to strangers without getting a weird look. And these strangers are only here to help you! Show your passion, practice, and have energy. Don’t worry about your content, but the story you have to tell. Your pitch should be story driven to uncover the passion for what you are doing. If you want to see how these pitch tips have worked for other entrepreneurs, stop by VVM’s Accelerator space Wednesday, April 8th at 5p.m.